Artificial intelligence is not just a casual interest of the tech industry. "In ten years, every company will have to be an artificial intelligence company or they won't be competitive," Loup Ventures Managing Partner Doug Clinton wrote in a Thursday note. "Every company," he emphasized, noting disruptions span energy and transportation, food and finance, retail and health. Some firms are already anticipating AI standards of their industries and investing in relevant technologies and strategies. Their efforts, Clinton said, position them to profit.

Amazon is having a rough week. The e-commerce powerhouse has celebrated a string of victories this year. Its stock price broke above $1,000 for the first time; it is presiding over an unprecedented retrenchment within the retail space as more than 8,000 brick-and-mortar stores are expected to close in the US this year, and the company announced plans to acquire yuppie favorite Whole Foods Market, promising to transform the company's stores into laboratories for automation and AI where advanced sensors will perform tasks previously reserved for human cashiers. It also revealed that its "Prime Day" sale was the "Biggest Global Shopping Event in Amazon History", surpassing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. But the string of good news came to an abrupt halt last week when Reuters reported that the top Democrat on the House antitrust subcommittee, David Civilline, has voiced concerns about Amazon's $13.7 billion plan to buy Whole Foods Market and requested in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee a hearing to examine the deal's potential impact on consumers – the first stirrings of what could metastasize into an anti-trust probe.

The video, which appears to have been recorded using a drone, gives a sweeping look of the enormous facility's exterior before zooming in on Bezos himself, who is sat on the building's roof. Propped nonchalantly in a camping chair and wearing aviator shades, the multi-billionaire, 53, holds a sign in one hand that reads: 'Rocket factory coming soon'. In his first ever Instagram video, billionaire Jeff Bezos showed off a manufacturing facility to be used by his space private rocket firm Blue Origin. According to the video's tag, the plant is set to build Blue Origin's heavy-lift New Glenn'megarocket', which will be used to launch space satellites. The New Glenn booster is designed to fly itself back to Earth so it can be recovered and re-flown, slashing launch costs.

Marketers are the store managers of the online retail world: it's up to them to ensure that visitors are having a good time and finding what they need. The challenge is insight: online store managers find it much harder to see what's really going on in the shop, compared to their real world counterparts. It's not immediately obvious why a particular product isn't selling online, or how customers are getting lost or sidetracked on their way to the checkout. That's why, over the past few years, companies in a variety of sectors have focused their attention on enhancing their user experience (UX). Often seen as a qualitative measure of how users'feel' while on websites, UX has historically been difficult to measure.

Now, however, Android owners can finally ask Alexa about package shipping, to watch a show on Netflix, or even to pay their American Express bill from the Amazon shopping app on their Google-powered handsets. According to TechCrunch, who initially reported a Twitter user's discovery of the feature, Alexa should start to roll out to Android OS Amazon shopping app users this week. While Android users can already use voice search in Amazon's shopping app, it makes sense to upgrade that to something more robust like Alexa. It could also likely bring the voice assistant to the attention of even more folks out there on Android. We've reached out to Amazon for confirmation and will update this post when we hear back.

Hook has just rolled out what it is calling the first artificial intelligence generated fashion feed for consumers. The Hook Fashion Discovery is free and available at the App Store and on Google Play. Parent company Intelligence Node said the app features "user-friendly, editorial-style" content that aims to educate users "at a glance on trending styles and current bestsellers." The company said there are "millions of stockkeeping units featured" on the app, and that shoppers can search for "virtually any fashion item." The app is being positioned in the market to target Millennials.

Sears will begin selling its appliances on Amazon.com, The announcement Thursday sent shares of Sears soaring more than 18 percent at the opening bell. The tie-up with the internet behemoth could give shares of the storied retailer one of its biggest one-day percentage gains ever. Sears, which also owns Kmart, said that its Kenmore Smart appliances will be fully integrated with Amazon's Alexa, allowing users to control things like air conditioners through voice commands. "The launch of Kenmore products on Amazon.com will significantly expand the distribution and availability of the Kenmore brand in the U.S.," Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert said in a company release.

Sears will begin selling its appliances on Amazon.com, The announcement Thursday sent shares of Sears soaring more than 18% at the opening bell. The tie-up with the internet behemoth could give shares of the storied retailer one of its biggest one-day percentage gains ever. Sears, which also owns Kmart, said that its Kenmore Smart appliances will be fully integrated with Amazon's Alexa, allowing users to use voice commands for air conditioners and other controls. "The launch of Kenmore products on Amazon.com will significantly expand the distribution and availability of the Kenmore brand in the U.S.," Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert said in a company release. Sears has struggled with weak sales for years, and announced more store closings earlier this month, partly due to the emergence of Amazon and other Internet operators.

By the time Amazon finally gave up on its Fire Phone, it had $83 million worth of inventory gathering dust in its warehouses--even though at that point, the phones only cost a dollar on contract. It remains perhaps the biggest flub of Jeff Bezos' career, a missed shot at getting a foothold in smartphones, the most important new consumer product in generations. Not quite three years later, it's time to try again. Yes, Amazon got burned on smartphones the first time around. And yes, if anything, the market has become even more squeezed.

Walmart is embracing technology as it competes with Amazon. The company is reportedly developing a facial recognition system that identifies whether a customer is unhappy, according to a patent filed by Walmart. The patent application published this year shows the retailer is developing a facial recognition system that identifies a customer's dissatisfaction. The Wall Street Journal first reported the patent on Wednesday. Read: Amazon Could Launch Stand-Alone Messaging App'Anytime,' Here Are The Possible Features Included "It is easier to retain existing customers than acquire new ones through advertising," Walmart explained in the patent filed in 2012.